Literary Birthday – 4 April – Dan Simmons

Those who ignore history’s lessons in the ultimate folly of war are forced to do more than relive them … they may be forced to die by them.

In the beginning was the Word. Then came the fucking word processor. Then came the thought processor. Then came the death of literature. And so it goes.

Belief in one’s identity as a poet or writer prior to the acid test of publication is as naive and harmless as the youthful belief in one’s immortality… and the inevitable disillusionment is just as painful.

I knew that I wanted to be a writer even before I knew exactly what being a writer entailed.

The sum of the crowd’s IQ was far below that of its most modest single member. Mobs have passions, not brains.

There’s a unique bond of trust between readers and authors that I don’t believe exists in any other art form; as a reader, I trust a novelist to give me his or her best effort, however flawed.

It occurs to me that our survival may depend upon our talking to one another.

Dan Simmons is an American author. He is most well known for his Hugo Award-winning science fiction series, known as the Hyperion Cantos. His most recent book is The Terror.